Want climate resistant oysters, or climate “Justice”? The ARC has millions to help. But no money for skeptics.

File this under “Monopolistic Science”

Australian Taxpayer funds in 2012 are supporting around 50 projects about “climate change” or “greenhouse gases”.

One David McKnight has got $95k to study how Australian governments “spin” the news. So which cancer research project was knocked back so he could study a “hyper-adversarial” news system? And what is so bad about a competitive news system in any case? What are we aiming for — real news or better propaganda? (See my response to David McKnight in The Australian to see how confused this journalism lecturer is.)

The dollar values here are usually for three year projects. Some of these projects potentially produce press releases which are nothing more than disguised forms of government advertising for big-spending climate policies.

The ARC (Australian Research Council) is the main source of funding for all researchers in all fields of natural, political and social sciences. Getting a grant will make a difference between carrying on doing research and finding another job, for many researchers. Take a look, for example, at the abstracts of the winning Discovery Projects.

I counted at least 50 winning projects with the magic words “climate change” or greenhouse gas emission in them (compared with about 10 astronomy projects, and 19 cancer research projects, for example). “Climate change” projects raked up $16 million in the Discovery category alone.

There’s a handful of them. But there are projects listed as geography, biology, film & digital media, oceanography, journalism, civil engineering, statistics, applied maths, soil science, political science, physiology, geology, archaeology, literary studies, psychology, econometrics, and more… all claiming in their 3-line abstracts that their various pet projects are going to help us understand, fight, adapt for, convince people of climate change. There’s one grant proposal that starts with the words “climate change represents a moral challenge to humanity“: it won a cute $200,000, no need to read more. There’s one that promises to study how oysters can be made resilient to climate change: here’s $285,000 coming their way. A $320,000 civil engineering research proposal informs us that “evidence” shows how floods and rains are getting worse because of global warming. Another one got $250,000 for drafting recommendations to achieve “climate justice” (whatever that is); expensive, yes, but do you want to put a price on justice? Then there’s a physiology professor at Sydney Uni who got $370,000 for a 3-year project that “will show to what extent individuals can compensate for temperature changes, and thereby render populations resilient to climate change” (I put on my sweater; I take it off. There, I have just saved you 3 years of work and $370,000).

For the old school Marxists, there’s a $239,000 Monash (where else?) project that will “develop a new cultural materialist paradigm” applied to science-fiction representations of extreme climate change. And we cannot miss a $314,000 Monash grant to study how climate change is shrinking birds (in California, climate change is making birds bigger, but never mind). A group of civil engineers got $320,000 for developing light-gauge steel roofing systems: they were clever enough to say that we need steel roofing to increase building resistance against “extreme wind events caused by climate change”. $100,000 went to two Queensland sociologists who will study how to guarantee “food security in Australia in an era of climate change” through “a multiplicity of agencies” (well, at least these two chaps have got food security for a couple of years).

If you want to study how housing prices change because of climate change, here’s $170,000 for you. The effect of climate change on the Great Barrier Reef is worth much more, about $490,000. $122,000 will be spent in the noble pursuit of reducing “climate-change associated mortality in rural areas of South Australia” (I guess mortality in the cities will be left to the next round of grants).

$335,000 will be used to study the history of Pacific islands abandoned because of climate change (a history that hasn’t happened yet?). And how can we forget the plight of the krill off the east coast, and of the “fiddler crab” suffering because of global warming in the mangroves of Darwin Harbour: $170,000 and $340,000 respectively is the least Australian taxpayers can do for these poor little creatures and their concerned minders.

And by the way, number of winning projects that propose to test whether climate change is real or catastrophic: zero. The climate-change industry has really become a monster out of control.

Some of those projects would not have got a cent, if the government wasn’t under the influence of this collective hallucination.

There’s a whole parasitic class of academics who make a good living off the catastrophic climate change myth, and the larger this class grows, the more difficult it will be to burst the bubble. Anyway, just in case you think this is just sour grapes, it is not. I actually won a grant myself this round, and it is one of the few projects that will do absolutely nothing for or against climate change But I am sad to see so much research money wasted for nothing.

Roberto

Projects to watch

Additional thoughts by Joanne Nova

Let’s keep a watch on these projects eh? (And do search the list and comment on others…)

—————————–

DP120100629
Spinning out of control: the management of news by two Australian governments, 2004-2010

McKnight, A/Prof David C
Total $95,000.00
Primary FoR 1903 JOURNALISM AND PROFESSIONAL WRITING, The University of New South WalesProject Summary
This project will examine the use of news management or ‘spin’ by Australian governments. Is it a legitimate tool of
government in the face of a hyper-adversarial news media or a technique which undermines democracy? It will examine
‘spin’ in connection with policies on climate change, economic policy, indigenous policy and asylum seekers policy.

—————————-

Atmoscape: the aesthetic reformulation of the atmosphere using intelligent imaging systems

Total $368,000.00
Primary FoR 1902 FILM, TELEVISION AND DIGITAL MEDIA, The University of New South WalesProject Summary
The proposed research provides Australia with an opportunity to advance its understanding of atmosphere and climate
by building the world’s first remote sensing visualisation system networked across three continents.

—————————

DP120104797
Rethinking climate justice in an age of adaptation: capabilities, local variation, and public deliberation

Schlosberg, Prof David; Niemeyer, Dr Simon J
Total $250,000.00
Primary FoR 1606 POLITICAL SCIENCE, The University of SydneyProject Summary
This project aims to produce recommendations, designed by citizens and stakeholders, for climate adaptation policies in three regions of Australia. These recommendations will be based on a definition of climate justice that incorporates basic needs and resources to be protected, as identified by potentially impacted communities.

—————————

DP120100961
Sending and responding to messages about climate change: the role of emotion and morality

Hornsey, Prof Matthew J; Fielding, Dr Kelly
Total $197,302.00
Primary FoR 1701 PSYCHOLOGY, The University of QueenslandProject Summary
Climate change represents a moral challenge to humanity, and one that elicits high levels of emotion. This project examines how emotions and morality influence how people send and receive messages about climate change, and does so with an eye to developing concrete and do-able strategies for positive change.

—————————

DP120100622
Locating science fiction

Milner, Prof Andrew J
Total $239,000.00
Primary FoR 2005 LITERARY STUDIES, Monash UniversityProject Summary
The project will devise and develop a new ‘cultural materialist’ paradigm for science fiction studies and apply it to a case study of science fictional representations of catastrophe, especially nuclear war, plague and extreme climate change.

108 comments to Want climate resistant oysters, or climate “Justice”? The ARC has millions to help. But no money for skeptics.

I will be pointing people to this information the next time they talk about the skeptics being funded by big oil? So correct me if I am wrong, but it seems that man made climate change is the most cashed up field of study. With all the people dying of cancer more money is going into man made “climate change” which has yet to kill a single person!

Alright, those of you with appropriate credentials: Piled Higher & Deeper (PHD) Why don’t you apply for a grant under false pretenses of some pro-CAGW theme? Simply change the focus or be “astounded” when your study results in a pro-skeptical outcome.

Sure you might have to defend yourselves in court from charges of fraud but that doesn’t seem to stop the warmists……………

No one has ever been charged of fraud for reporting the results of experiments. There would be no fraud as, believe it or not, scientists don’t know the results before they start. So if the results are pro or anti AGW then they are still data and still reported. The ARC would be asking questions only if there was no output from the money they allocated.

And you are quite happy for your taxes to be spent on the tosh listed above- money well spent, you think? I think that is more pertinent question than whether or not they are committing fraud. What happened to appropriate prioritisation of funds?

maybe an FOI of the applications and the reviewer reports will give more information about the research. I think more information is needed than executive summaries before you dam the whole process. I can’t see why these can’t be public but I don’t know the details of the Act.

A more useful exercise, if we are to be giving this a proper sceptic’s eye, would be to look at completed project. The current national priorities were instigated during the Howard government so go back to 2006 and pick out some titles and summaries and then judge the content of the publications. ie conduct an assessment exercise (with data) rather than a guessment exercise (which can’t be assessed for many years).

Absolutely,Gee Aye.
But this is a bipartisan politicisation of scientific funding and processes, and has been going on a lot longer than this current lamentable government, and it urgently needs an objective and comprehensive review of how scientific research is funded, conducted and prioritised, particularly according to the value it may potentially contribute to the broader society.

I would argue, however, that if the executive summary of the research doesn’t inspire any confidence in the relevance or purposefulness of that particular study, why do it at all, and especially why spend our hard earned and valuable money doing it, if it merely is a pure unadulterated wank to begin with?

the nature of public funding arrangements for research have been refined over this period

“Refined”- Hmmm. Doesn’t inspire confidence. And a look at the list of usual suspects overseeing doesn’t either. What is needed is complete objectivity- and governments are pathologically incapable of objectivity, because it might yield results they don’t wish advertised or highlighted. Governments are highly unlikely to find that government interference is tainting and skewing scientific processes and results, for example.

“believe it or not, scientists don’t know the results before they start”.

Sorry Gee Aye, in the case of the AGW hypothesis that’s not so. Under the definition of climate change set out in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the UNIPCC were specifically directed to find: “a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods” .

This deliberate politicisation of the process triggered the arguments which have been going on ever since. Irrational fossil fuel hater (of coal in particular) James Hansen, had set the scene in his appearance before the US Congress in 1988 in which he first publicly expounded his alarmist AGW rantings, much to the embarrassment of many of his NASA colleagues. What was then needed by “the cause” was publicity for the obvious correlating link to CO2 (human-induced of course). Even though everything known of the correlation certainly did not indicate causation of any significant measurable rise in temperature, while slight warming due to natural variability was occurring, the parts per million graph of this essential trace gas was easily “monstered” at the behest of the many vested interests, into something catastrophic in the minds of a gullible public.

And surprise, surprise. The UNIPCC found what they had been instructed to and knew they would before they started!

Don’t be stupid Keith. Climate scientists don’t find what they are “supposed” to. There was an estimate of climate sensitivity in a recent paper of under 2 C. How did that get through? Similarly with the BEST team – they didn’t find what they expected, but duly reported what they did find.

If you see conspiracies, that is because you are a conspiracy nut, not because there actually are conspiracies.

Who mentioned conspiracy JB? I’m not into name-calling so I’ll leave that to you. I gave you a specific example which in my opinion corrupted the whole process from the start. The words are direct from article 1 of the UNFCCC and the embarrassment of Hansens’s colleagues in NASA is on record. I did not mention others so what has the Best team got to do with it or the authors of any other “paper” for that matter?

The term “the cause” came courtesy of the Climategate emails from those involved in pushing the AGW hypothesis. I think you’re naive in your blind faith in all “climate scientists” holding the AGW faith, but you’re entitled to your opinion and interpretation of events, just as I’m entitled to mine. You may think me “stupid” and that’s your problem not mine but it does highlight your superior attitude to anyone who deigns to disagree with your blinkered views!

Great post Dr Soria, I particularly liked: “I put on my sweater; I take it off. There, I have just saved you 3 years of work and $370,000″ Of course you could add to that – “I turn the heater on, I turn it off”, “I turn the air-conditioner on, I turn it off”. Ha ha.

Unfortunately this isn’t really a laughing matter. Especially when you consider this ‘pro Climate Change’ type funded research from the Australian Research Council is just the tip of the iceberg (excuse the pun!).

There is a lot of research funding coming directly from various other Government sources such as the Department of Climate Change, the Department of Science and Technology, various state departments of Agriculture, Fisheries, Forestry, Environment and Conservation, State and Federal Health Departments and so on. The gravy train seems endless!

Here are examples of funding which the alarmist psychology Professor Stephan Lewandowsky is currently bragging about:

Perhaps the coalition should state now that they will review and cancel any unnecessary ‘climate change’ research projects immediately they come to power. Perhaps that would better discourage people from doing the easy funding, ‘soft’ research and instead concentrate on research projects which would stand up to scrutiny regardless of which party is in power?

Quoting from the article:
“…projects would not have got a cent, if the government wasn’t under the influence of this collective hallucination”.
“There’s a whole parasitic class of academics who make a good living off the catastrophic climate change myth…”

Fully agree, but it is difficult to condemn a Professor, looking to fund students, for picking the easy road to a grant. It is hard enough to get grants, so if the “magic words” open the doors to the cave of riches, then they will utter them. It doesn’t necessarily mean they believe in AGW.

On the other hand, universities are a semi-closed artificial world, kept alive by government funding. Their view of the “outside world” can be quite strange, as anybody having business with them will agree. It is highly probable that many academics do believe in AGW and regard sceptics as people of lower intelligence whose ideas must be rejected. You only have to look at comments by J. Brookes to see this attitude.

But when the government ceases to believe in AGW and the funds stop flowing, the change in attitudes will be swifter than that ever achieved by the Vicar of Bray.

Unfortunately I don’t think this kind of scientific prostitution is limited to climate science. Wherever funding is up for grabs from an interested party (politically, financially or both) there will be parasites all too ready to take the bait. Sorry for mixing my metaphors there.

The reason I mention this is Jo asked (rhetorically of course) at the top of the post “which cancer research project was knocked back…” Doesn’t the cancer research industry have its own parasites, also thriving on fear and ignorance within an emotionally charged climate (pun not intended)? Not to mention all the politically motivated “research” aimed at finding spurious links – second-hand smoke, for example (a statistical abuse akin to what we see in climate science). I just think the cancer research industry was probably not the best example of alternative funding.

You are absolutely right about the preying on fear and ignorance. Our Western society has been brain washed to expect eternal youth and immortality. It is like we need to eliminate all source of mortality, rather than accept the inevitability of our human condition – death.

Medical research that merely defers the inevitable is a waste of money.

I read a comment a couple of years ago by an eminent Australian medical researcher (whose name currently eludes me). He said that the primary purpose of modern medical research is to produce PhD candidates. Useful outcomes are considered to be little more than an occasional serendipitous byproduct of this process.

To be fair, and it is only going by a few of the abstracts, the proposals are not apportioning blame for climate change. Some of the research is looking at adaptation which is necessary regardless of the cause of climate change (all in lower case so as not to alarm).

Climate change is real. It is inevitable. Therefore adaptation is necessary. What is abhorrent to me, are those who want to change the climate or who claim that we can influence the climate and then want money to research that. Even more ahorrent are those who want the already over-burdened taxpayer to fund a scheme (ETS) to reduce CO2 emissions in the pretense that will do anything to ameiorate the climate. (One politician – I forget who – at least admitted that NZ’s ETS would not have any impact on global climate – it was just a token gesture. At the cost to the country it is more than just token.)

All these studies about “adapting” to climate change… What an absolute crock of shit.
They could simply interview anybody who has moved from Victoria to Queensland.
I think that showing this funding information to friends will be a very convincing demonstration of how “climate scienctists” are nothing but intellectual whores for government cash.
At least when you go to a real prostitute you get something for your money.

If the government don’t have any physical evidence for “Global Warming” then they’ll pay a lot to manufacture some. Even if it turns out to be an opinion piece by a PhD patsy who’s been on the gravy train for 3 years and would like another 3.

One on the ARC list has my blood pressure at concerning levels, again.
It’s grandly titled “Industrial transformation Research Program”. The target -”Richer, Fairer, Greener Australia”.
Aim is to have 50 research ‘hubs’ within 5 years. 20 of which will include training in – “Social Impacts : Inclusion : Industrial and Community Transformation”.
The cost – mere $236M.
George Orwells 1984 Big Brother has really arrived.

It seems that basic research has become a quaint custom of the past. All research is now agenda driven. In the environmental sciences everything is directed at purported problems and funding to investigate a problem never finds that there isn’t one or that it isn’t very serious. More research is always needed. Welcome to the Brave New World.

Perhaps the coalition should state now that they will review and cancel any unnecessary ‘climate change’ research projects immediately they come to power. Perhaps that would better discourage people from doing the easy funding, ‘soft’ research and instead concentrate on research projects which would stand up to scrutiny regardless of which party is in power?

Let us think about their claims.
Sauropods appeared in the late Triassic, flourished in the 69 million years of the Jurassic and declined somewhat in the 79 million years of the Cretaceous; so the Jurassic should show the effect of their flatulence.

The Jurassic started off with 1400 ppm CO2 and this climbed to 2600 ppm, plus the effect of all that dinosaur gas. So the temperature rose with the CO2 and DGW (dinosaur gas warming), didn’t it?

No it didn’t; as the CO2 rose above 2,000 ppm the global temperature dropped, and there were ice sheets in the Antarctic for 13 million years. So neither CO2 or dinosaur gas caused any warming, unless you want to claim that the warmth of the following Cretaceous was a delayed reaction to the DWG.

So either CO2 and/or methane don’t cause warming, or the effect doesn’t occur for 13 million years. THIS IS A COMPLETE REFUTATION OF AGW SCIENCE.

“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present — and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

There is nothing new in this, any applicants seeking funding have a far greater chance of success if they include the magic words of whatever is the current fad. It used to happen all the time in education – I called the process of applying for grants the “gold lotto funding approach”- when schools that included magic catch phrases e.g. inclusivity, community engagement, got the rewards. This doesn’t mean any committment to the AGW cause, just that they’ve worked out how to get the money. Follow the money back to the source, the ARC and of course the government. They’re the real shonks.
Ken

It’s a weird complaint you’re registering. (oh, I guess, unless you think AGW isn’t real). A problem slowly unfolds that has global effects and is likely to be felt in many sectors and you complain about public funds being directed towards a better understanding of it? Weird.

It’s like discovering that a 3km wide asteroid appears to have a 60-80% chance of striking Earth on a second passing in 2048 and then complaining when some of the budget for planetary exploration gets diverted towards trying to refine the multiple-body orbital problem represented by the asteroid. I think most of the normal people on earth would be able to recognize the need to prioritize and find out exactly if/where the asteroid will strike and whether there are ways of destroying or diverting it. Planetary exploration could be put on ice for a decade without much consequence.

Of course, it’s even worse than that – folks on here would not only avoid spending the appropriate research dollars, they’d insist on funding anybody (even their dentist probably) who said they couldn’t find the asteroid in their 3-inch Tasco refractor….

Not even going to bother disliking this one.
Irony is that being hit by asteroids is a real physical threat with historical precedent unlike CAGW which only poses a threat via the theft of tax payers money.

The problem is that none of the ARC grant money is going to be spent trying to find the asteroid.

Why?

Let’s run with your metaphor, shall we?

Imagine that a clique of scientists tweak a computer model to project a 60-80% probability of an asteroid strike on Earth… there is no empirical evidence that an asteroid is on the way, other than that there is an Asteroid Belt out there, so… it’s possible…. But their computer models show a deadly strike is eminent.

Scientists search the “Astro hotspot” where incoming asteroids should make an early appearance. Nada. But, hey, so what? They’re out there! Somewhere….maybe…hopefully?

A section of our polity and intellectuals adopts the new “Asteroid Apocalypse” science as their political narrative, which–coincidently — generally supports the policy agenda they were seeking to implement before even knowing about Asteroid Apocalypse science.

One of their leaders makes a film depicting how we are all going to die unless we change the orbit of Earth….Obviously, this will mean giving unprecedented powers to unelected “World Leaders” and a suspension of civil liberties, plus massive new taxes. He wins a Noble Peace Prize.

The Science is Settle. The Debate is Over…or so Astro Alarmists tells us.

Then an unlikely ragtag group scientists (allegedly funded by the notorious SFTC–the Single Flush Toilet Cartel) double-check the Asteroid Scientists’ math results and show there is only a 0.001 to 0.01.% chance of an asteroid strike, not a 60% chance… Worse, they find that some asteroid catastrophists HAD MANIPULATED THE DATA! Thus began the Asteroidgate, “Hide the Orbit” scandal. The HockeyPuck Fraud.

By now the whole bloody world is riveted by the so-called “Asteroid Debate.” Everyone wants to know what the REAL truth is. Are we all gonna die???

But the Asteroid Team scientists refuse to debate or share their data…they are even caught plotting to lock asteroid skeptics out of the peer-reviewed journals. Some journals like American Asteroid and Asteroid Nature refuse to publish anything by “asteroid deniers.”

So the skeptics make their case online in blogs like Watts Up There, Jo Supernova and AstroAudit. The public loses faith in the emerging Asteroid Worship Cult as the sordid truth of the matter slowly leaks out. US President Barry Obutta refuses to support the global Asteroid Chit Market… the A-chit market collapses…

Senator Brownie Bob, the Asteroidists leader endorses a one world dictatorship of the proletariat in order to welcome the Asteroid, which he claims might well be a spaceship piloted by alien lifeforms far more intelligent than us. Sen. Bob proposes to wave immigration processing for all aliens and offers to become their all-powerful representative to planet Earth.

Still, the intellectual, academic and media elite class of Australia — never the sharpest knives in the lucky country’s cutlery drawer — just don’t get it.

In 2012 the ARC and gives out millions of dollars of grant money largely to develop a more advance Asteroid Apocalypse narratives designed to culturally adapt early 20th Century Marxist agitprop techniques to the Asteroid Catastrophist side of the debate without giving a single dollar the Asteroid Skeptics.

But, far more telling, the ARC never gave either side any money to sort out the empirical evidence for the existence of an asteroid either way.

It won’t let me reply the Wes George directly, but his piece is offensive to astronomers who wouldn’t behave like that at all.

Imagine that a clique of scientists tweak a computer model to project a 60-80% probability of an asteroid strike on Earth… there is no empirical evidence that an asteroid is on the way, other than that there is an Asteroid Belt out there, so… it’s possible…. But their computer models show a deadly strike is eminent.

There are asteroids crossing the Earth’s orbit all the time and some come closer than the Moon. There are astronomers dedicated to cataloging each and every one of these objects with the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous mission. They work out the future orbits of these asteroids and assess the probability of a possible future collision with Earth.

My impression is that there is no way astronomers would cause undue alarm and create doomsday scenarios in order to obtain extra funding, unlike climate scientists. They would never “manipulate” data and as a profession they are always willing to make observations of orbits available to anyone, amateurs included. Indeed, the best thing that can happen with the discovery of a new object in the sky is to alert people all over the world immediately in order to obtain more and continuous observations to determine the most accurate orbit as quickly as possible.

It’s not the greatest analogy drummed up by Matt Bennett but Wes’ putdown of it isn’t great either.

Your whole ‘use’ of my analogy, as pointed out by Ian, is WAY off mark. Just like cohenite’s ridiculous mis-reading below. I didn’t say the asteroid ‘might’ be coming or is ‘projected’ to come following to application of the laws of chance to the distribution of bodies in the asteroid belt. It’s been observed and it’s on its way baby! Now, astronomers being the fantastic and intelligent scientists that they are have successfully given us an astronomical ‘window’ through which the object will pass. It’s like climate sensitivity, we’re not wondering IF the climate is sensitive to CO2 changes, we’re trying to nail down its quantitative value. In the same way, until more research is done by astronomers and until the asteroid’s path is tracked for a longer period, the extreme complexity of multi-body orbital mechanics and its sensitivity to the precision of our observed ‘initial conditions’ will render a more accurate result impossible. (hence the research dollars!)

Note I did NOT say that AGW and asteroid strikes are the same thing, nor did I say their destructive sequelae are of equal threat/magnitude – just for the brain dead among you…

So AGW is as bad as being hit by a 3km wide asteroid? Well, that is what happened 65 million years ago. Basically the atmosphere was set on fire and the top 100 metres of the oceans evaporated. That should stop people worrying about sea level rise then.

Matt. I know you’ll immediately want to shoot the messenger when you know who it is, but do you find anything wrong with the approaches advocated here:

“Attempting to ‘stop climate change’ is an extravagant and costly exercise of utter futility. Rational climate policies must be based on adaptation to climate change as it occurs, irrespective of its causation.”

Natural climate change being an important human hazard, research funding for climate change issues should be maintained at a healthy level. But the focus of the spending needs to be shifted from its present overemphasis on “greenhouse” alarmism and computer modelling research to a balance of: (i) documentation and analysis of modern weather patterns (earth observing systems), and patterns of past climate change (stratigraphic study); and (ii) deepening our understanding of all mechanisms of climate change, not just radiation theory.

Planning for inevitable future climate change, both natural and possibly human-caused, will best be undertaken in the same way as we plan for other natural disasters such as bushfires, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunami and cyclones.”

If you could read the following essay in full with an open mind it might ease the fear you seem to have about some computer-modelled projection of possible catastrophe in 100 years time based on various what-if scenarios if we don’t “do something”.

Thanks Keith, leave it with me and I’ll make it my job to give it a thorough read tonight. I’m certainly not into ‘shooting any messengers’ – I’ll look at the message and assess it on its own merits, as always.

(exceptions would be repeatably debunked idiots who’re shown where they are wrong and continue to spout their nonsense… eg creationists like Ham or Hovind, ‘ID’ proponents like Behe or Demski or Monckton on anything

One way to expose the CC boondoggler research boom – make a successful spoof submission.

Remember US physics professor Alan Sokal’s famous 1996 hoax?

An article he had published in the cultural studies journal Social Text was revealed – by Sokal himself – to be a cunningly worded parody. It publicly exposed the meaningless jargon of the extreme postmodern critique of science.

actually, this ‘spoof’ submission has form, and dates back to 1947, and from a source you may not expect. I’ve mentioned it before here, but it’s worth bringing it up here again.

While done as a spoof, it was actually done for practice.

Isaac Asimov had already become a successful SF author by this time, even while still at Columbia and working towards his Doctorate in Biochemistry.

What he wanted to do was to practice writing up a thesis for his Doctorate, and being an author of SF, he wanted to see if he could write in a more factual way that his paper would have to be written in.

He was basing his Doctorate loosely around solubility, and he was using a substance called Catechol. He noticed that it dissolved almost instantly on contact with water. That gave him the germ of an idea to write something in the style needed for a thesis, basing it upon a substance that dissolved 1.12 seconds before coming in contact with water, and he then wrote The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline in the same style needed for his written thesis, complete with made up graphs, and false references etc, the whole lot.

He took it along to his publishers and they accepted it immediately, and it was published. Asimov, not wanting to jeapordise his Doctorate for thinking that the examiners might think of him as ‘taking the mickey’, had asked Campbell to publish it under a pseudonym, and it actually came out under his real name, and three months before his ‘orals’ for his Doctorate.

He thought he was stuffed, but it went well for him in fact. During those orals, one of the examiners even asked him a question about Thiotimoline, probably with tongue firmly planted in cheek, and that broke the ice evidently.

Asimov got his Doctorate, and that short story actually produced three further short stories over the years.

I know it only bears passing relevance to the thrust of this Post from Joanne, but oddly, this was one of the first things I thought of.

For those who wish to read this short story, and some of Asimov’s own thoughts on this, I have a link.

It’s a pdf document of 1.75MB, and is very long, so you’ll need to scroll down a long way. There’s no direct page numbering on the pages themselves, but most readers have page numbering in the document reader tool bar, and it’s on page 253, and it’s only relatively short.

I remember reading something like this in the Science Union Newsletter when I was a first year at uni. I was sucked in good and proper. My only excuse was that alongside special relativity and quantum mechanics, it didn’t seem so weird…

Except in this case, climate scientists are the Sokals, exposing the shoddy misunderstandings of the geologists/”lords”/think tanks for what they are – a mish-mash of nonsense spun to confuse the gullible. Just like those French postmodernists!

I see you have stopped trying to contribute real comments on this forum but instead are resorting to lazy trolling.I don’t blame you – It must be so embarrassing and shameful to have these grants exposed to the public, the majority of which are skeptical of CAGW but are definite believers in the affects of cancer.

Cans and glass bottles of soda (but not PVC bottles because porous to CO2 after a few months) are carbon sinks. They become carbon sources only when we drink them and release the fizz. Each regular-size can of soda contains 2 g of CO2. Using a sensitivity of Delta T = 1.2 C for a doubling of atmospheric CO2, it leads to a temperature increase of 1E(-18) C per can, or three times that value if we believe the IPCC feedbacks. People like Andrew Bolt may claim this is very little, but Australia should show leadership towards a low carbon future, we cannot afford to be left behind. So, I suggest that all existing carbonated cans in our fridges should be collected by the government and stored underground (geo-sequestration). Only non-carbonated cans of eCoke should be sold for drinking (with plain packaging). Government-funded studies show that replacement non-carbonated eCoke is just as tasty as the old fizzy one.

Something only loosely relevant, but it’s been eating away at me ever since I found out about it.

The Nobel Prize this year was worth nearly US$1.5 million. I don’t know what it was worth in 2007, when they gave it to Al Gore, but I dare say it was an awful lot. More important, of course, is the respect the prize is intended to bestow.

If it’s any consolation, the Nobel Peace Prize has been a cynically corrupt joke since at least Kissinger in 1973. Gore was just another in a long line of insults to the Nobel name and Obama won’t be the last.

Please tell me this is not spending 368 grand to look at cloudy skies through a video camera.

I mean, why don’t they… how can they tell… couldn’t they just…. Arrrgh! STOOPID GOVERNMENT.

As for the adversarial media, well I have not really abandoned the MSM as a source of news, I basically never even started using them as a source of news. The Internet has more variety and as text I can skim as much as I want whenever I want. The newspapers are little more than yesterday’s RSS with extra spin and bonus dead tree.

Last night I watched Q&A (a rare event for me). One of the tweets flashed up on the screen was utterly astonishing, though with the ABC leftards flocking to the show it should not have surprised me as much as it did:
“The politicians may be on message, but is the media?”

“This project will examine the link between stupid billboards with the unabomber on them and climate change, the greatest moral challenge of our time, as it is repesented in the hyper-adversarial news media. The proposed research provides Australia with an opportunity to advance its understanding of cultural responses to such billboards in indigenous and assylum seeker communities in addressing the moral and logistical response to climate change”.

Milner, Prof Andrew J
Total $239,000.00 – The project will devise and develop a new ‘cultural materialist’ paradigm for science fiction studies and apply it to a case study of science fictional representations of catastrophe, especially nuclear war, plague and extreme climate change.

Q1 Please express a preference:

(a)Jump the carbon scam and whip up an endless stream of funding for the foreseeable future
(b)Leave academia and get a real and productive job

If there was no Carbon Tax, then there would be no surplus, and checking forward, that’s no surplus this year, next year, the year after that, and the year after that.

So, when a perspicacious Julia Gillard, promised us there would be no Carbon Tax, and promised us that the Budget would show a surplus, all she really was doing was breaking one promise so she didn’t have to break another promise.

Now that’s forward thinking priceless.

I guess those surpluses will slide back into oblivion after that, when the CO2 price drops to the World average. No, wait a minute, I’m actually wrong there, aren’t I? They covered that base didn’t they, by putting a floor price of $15 per tonne on CO2.

No wonder he’s the World’s greatest Treasurer ….. (damn, lost that sarc off button again)

[...] nearly $200,000 – or $3 a word – to write a predictably hostile book on Rupert Murdoch. Dr Roberto Soria was onto this earlier this year (along with JoNova): And by the way, number of winning projects that propose to [...]